encounter_criticalfandomcom-20200213-history
Limb traders
The limb traders are a guild of specialized merchants. As well known, there are mutants with detachable limbs and these can be traded with others with removable body parts. On the other hand, limbs of a warrior are under constant threat of being severed. This niche market offers bread for the limb traders. Some limb traders are hawkers, but they also have a permanent trading centre in the southern Vanth, close to the western shore of the Sea of Great Peril. Non-canonical rumours Old soldiers tell many the tale of their glory days to young pups eager to draw blood for the first time, but there is one tale they only share with others who have shared their fate. It begins with a crippling wound such as ends the saga of many a would-be hero; an arm or leg is ruined, and the unfortunate warrior waits in agony until the chirurgeons can remove the maimed appendage. Sleep for such unfortunates is hard to come by, and is tortured by anguished nightmare. But worse are the dreams of the tattered black-robed ones, who come and take the pain away. In the morning, when the doctors come with bone-saws and cutting lasers to remove the mangled flesh and bone, their patients are amazed. "I thought you took it off last night!" they quaver when they see their injuries in the light of day. And then the horrors commence in earnest, for where they had whole arms and legs the night before, in the light of dawn... they now have none.Creel, Chris: Limb Traders. The Lexicon of Vanth. Many are those who have lost an arm or leg and yet feel it still, a phantasm conjured by minds that cannot accept their loss. But the ones who had the dream of the dark bedraggled devils, who took their good whole limbs and left them with their mutilations, know for a fact that their limbs are still whole, still hale. They know, too, that someone else is walking on their stolen feet, caressing soft flesh with their plundered hand... and they damn, in their impotent ways, the fiends from hell they call the Limb Traders. The Limb Traders themselves dismiss these tales as the delusions of traumatized minds, and offer a generous 10% discount on the purchase or lease of replacement limbs.Hoyle, Guy: Limb Traders. The Lexicon of Vanth. Combat and severed limbs In his memoir Rymd Apor! - Mitt Häpnade Liver I Gonzoversum (Malmö Färgepress, 1988) Rayner Mikkelsen recalls an EC house rule that all attacks resulting in physical damage with a percentile roll of 5 or less (and a failed saving throw by the opponent), often resulted in a crippling blow to a limb (or head - depending on the amount of received damage), either removing it completely from the torso or maiming it unusable. His memoir doesn't reveal the exact odds for hitting specific body parts for different creatures however, and it is suspected that these rules were implemented "Ad Hoc" by the journey master. The rules for amputations apparently gave the Limb Traders an important medical and economical role in some EC campaigns.Mikkelsen, Rayner: Rymd Apor! - Mitt Häpnade Liver I Gonzoversum. Malmo Färgepress, 1988, (As quoted by Torson Welles in the Lexicon of Vanth.) Source Category:Vanth Category:House rules Category:Canon